Econ 202 JL's Blog post #1

Around 30 years ago Jared Diamond was posed with a question from a man Yali living in Papa New Guinea, “Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it back to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own.” Diamond’s book Guns, Germs, and Steel is dedicated to answering this question that Yali posed over thirty years ago. However to better understand why some areas developed and prospered and advanced technologically while other civilizations struggled to survive let alone advance and become prosperous, we used the video game Civilization IV as a simulation to better understand Yali’s question and issues brought up in Guns, Germs, and Steel. Then we compared the history of civilizations to the simulation outcomes from the game and analyzed similarities and differences.
One of the most striking similarities found between the game and history is the cost of war. On my first attempt at playing Civilization IV I was in an overly aggressive mood and decided I would make a foolish and futile attempt to control as much territory as possible. I did not allocate enough man power or resources to everyday living and expansion of towns, but spent the vast majority of resources on soldiers and military technologies. I was able to spread out of the Fertile Crescent, but eventually I found myself fighting too many multi-front wars and eventually my civilization collapsed like most societies which spread themselves to thin and engaged in far too many battles trying to gain territory hastily. Examples of great civilizations of the past who spread their resources to thin over war and experienced the same collapse as I did in the simulation are Napoleon’s reign of France and collapse when trying to control Russia and march into Moscow, and the fall of the Roman Empire after trying to control almost all of Europe and Asia.
Overall the simulation showed the importance of balancing a civilization in order to have it advance and prosper. A society can not be too aggressive and try to develop at expand at too fast of a rate or it will simply collapse. Most resources need to be allocated to everyday living to help people leave simple substantive farming and become skilled, but in order for this to happen their has to be liquid capital or a food surplus so not everyone has to farm in order for everyone to eat. I did the opposite I only allocated enough resources for basic survival and little expansion of specific skills and building on gained territories, gaining land was my number one and only goal. Eventually this was fine everyone had food to eat and a place to sleep, but that did not last I underestimated the needs to my soldiers and militaries and eventually food shortages and lack of development led to the collapse of my militaristic society.
This simulation game also showed the difficulties in simple day to day life for developing civilizations. Northing comes easy and when I played around with the difficulty level I soon found holding a steady let alone increasing population was near impossible. This is very similar to history though very few societies have actually been able to prosper and become successful advance cultures, most do not make it much past infancy. An example is Papa New Guinea an area that has been populated for approximately twelve thousand years and has never successful developed past substantive farming, showing the main points of Diamond’s book Guns, Germs, and Steel, he argues that all people are of relatively the same intelligence and intuitiveness. However the origins of a civilization are crucial in dictating the success of the society. Climate, native animals and plants, and possible axis of expansion all play crucial roles in determining the fate of any society. These same principles govern success in the game when it comes to determining a starting point for your civilization and analyzing advantages and disadvantages to the given areas. Those factors are what Diamond concluded determined how civilizations out of the Fertile Crescent were able to advance and prosper, while civilizations on remote islands like Pap New Guinea never were able to get their feet off the ground.
Overall the simulation gained through the video game Civilization 4 was extremely valuable in helping us gained understanding why some civilizations prosper and others collapse. It also supplemented Diamond’s ideas and helped to understand Yali’s question.